These are ingredients which are essential and most popular for making Vietnamese dishes.
>> The ingredients for Vietnamese dishes (P2 – spicy vegetables)
# 1. Egg
Eggs are used commonly in Vietnamese dishes such as chicken eggs, quail eggs, duck eggs, goose eggs or salted duck eggs.
# 2. Curry
In many Vietnamese dishes, curry powder is very important, especially with poultry meats. Curry is also used to cook vegetarian.
# 3. Annatto seeds
Annatto is used very much in Vietnamese kitchens. It makes the food a naturally red-orange colour.
# 4. Agar-agar
This ingredient is used to make sweet soup, sweet food such as: fruit agar-agar, Longan fruit sweet soup, lotus sweet soup…
# 5. Artichoke flower
Artichoke is not only a vegetable but also a medicament. It is used to treat diseases connected with liver, nephritis, arthritis… Artichoke stewed with bone will give us nutritious and delicious soup. The dried Artichoke is used to make drinks like tea.
# 6. Bamboo shoots (fresh and dried)
Bamboo shoots are very popular in Vietnamese recipes (like: Bamboo shoots & pork leg soup), they make the dishes more delicious! With fresh bamboo sprouts, we must to remove the outside hard crust then boil for 20 minutes until they are no longer bitter and ready to be made. With dried bamboo shoots, we have to soak for about 12 hours then boil for 15 minutes then remove the water and boil twice more, 15 minutes once to remove the bitter flavour, make them crispy and shorten the cooking time.
# 7. Bean
There are many kinds of Bean (red adzuki, black-eyed peas, soya beans,…) in Vietnam which are both used to cook meat dishes and sweet soup like Red bean with lotus sweet soup, in almost of Ha Noi sweet soup.
# 8. Dried shrimps
Dried shrimps are used to cook with soup, fry with rice, stir-fry with vegetable.
# 9. Five-spice powder
This powder is mixed from five different spices include cinnamon, pepper, clove, fennel and star anise. Five-spice powder is always used for roasted ducks and chicken dishes, grilled slopes,…
# 10. Fried shallots
It is used to added the dishes before removing from heat. Fried shallots will make the dishes more aromatic and tasty.
